One of my favorite hobby activities is rebuilding old model railroad equipment that I have acquired over the years from friends, estate sales, and flea markets. I think it’s really cool to transform what appears to be a pile of junk into a high quality model. So, the time came to restore a beat-up O scale brass model of a Pennsylvania P54 coach that’s been in storage for about 35 years.

Components are secured to the PCB and the boards are then sent to a reflow oven or a wave bath for finished soldering. There will be areas of the PCB that need to be protected from solder and this is why solder mask (or more aptly described, solder resist) is important.[Read more…]

Desoldering braid (finely braided copper coated with flux) is an excellent product for removing solder. Simply heat the solder with your soldering iron until the solder reflows, touch the braid to the molten solder and in a few seconds the solder has “wicked” up the braid. Sounds good – until you realize that the copper braid is conducting the heat upward and your fingers are burning. To solve this you use much more braid than necessary simply to keep your fingers far enough away from the heat — wasted braid equals wasted money.